Proudly celebrating the 27th anniversary milestone of his company Richard Tyler International, one of the world’s most innovative, effective and influential Sales Training and Management Consulting firms, founder Richard Tyler estimates that between his authorship of various popular business books, syndicated TV appearances, keynote speeches and conducting his flagship Commitment to Excellence® Sales Immersion™ sales training and Leadership Mastery™ Immersion programs, he reaches upwards of one million people per year.

Tyler’s philosophies, which have directly helped everything from mom and pop upstart businesses to Global 1000 companies, have been chronicled everywhere from Entrepreneur Magazine to The Business Journals, Sales and Marketing magazine, Wealth & Finance International magazine, Acquisition International magazine and the Houston Chronicle in his adopted hometown. He has appeared on affiliates of FOX, CBS, NBC and ABC.

Renowned as a top business author as well as an influential, in demand speaker, Tyler’s books include “Smart Business Strategies™”, “Real World Customer Service Strategies That Work,” “Leadership Defined,” “Mission Possible” and “Marketing Magic.” His two forthcoming books with Celebrity Press are “Boom!” co-authored with Mark Victor Hansen (co-creator of the best-selling “Chicken Soup For The Soul” series) and “Success Today – Leading Entrepreneurs and Professionals Share Their Secrets to Health, Wealth and Happiness,” co-authored with Brian Tracy. Tyler will also soon be publishing “Sales Excellence – Seven Steps to Achieving Extraordinary SUCCESS in Sales.” In December 2014, he was interviewed by the TV show “Success Today.”

The variety and scope of the platforms Tyler engages may be expansive, but the philosophies Tyler imparts – whether he’s teaching on revenue generation, increasing profits or high customer satisfaction – all flow from the same essential principles that transcend race, creed or nationality.

Teaching what he calls “not simply business skills but life skills,” Tyler bases his timeless concepts on his nearly 40 years as a Sales Professional and his innate understanding of not only the process of buying and selling but also an instinctive understanding of our nature. His philosophies work across the board because they are based on human behavior.

“The deepest human desires are to feel loved, wanted needed and important,” he says, “and the two main reasons we make decisions are the desire to gain pleasure or profit and the desire to avoid pain and loss. These are universal because this is how we’re wired.”

Delineating the key difference between Richard Tyler International and other training/consulting firms, Tyler adds, “Most companies develop their concepts and techniques in different arenas separate from each other. They teach sales, then management, leadership and customer service but with completely distinct, incongruent philosophies. Our ideas are congruent across each of these areas and flow seamlessly into each other, with leadership and management training flowing directly from sales, which in turn creates the need for ongoing customer service. Everything we teach – including revenue generation, increasing profits and having high customer satisfaction – flows from the same sales principles. Sales is all about effectively communicating an idea to people so that they can evaluate your position and decide what’s right for them. In essence, we’re teaching everyone how to be master communicators.”

As Tyler segued from selling a wide array of tangible products in his early career to intangible services like advertising, he learned that he had to become a better storyteller to paint a convincing and practical picture for people to grasp the concept. As he tells his own remarkable tale of his rise from humble beginnings growing up in Warwick, Rhode Island with a strong willed mom, his brother, sister and grandparents, the multi-talented entrepreneur discovered a talent not only for sales but for training and aiding the success of others who had skills but couldn’t quite “crack the code” as he had done. He also cites several key moments along the journey where his trajectory shifted based on bold challenges he presented to employers and prospective clients.

One of the most fascinating aspects of his rise as an authority on sales strategies is the fact that his initial goal when attending the University of North Carolina, Charlotte was to go into law enforcement and criminal justice. He describes himself as an altruistic kid who had seen some legal injustice growing up and thought being a cop or a Fed was the way he would make a difference in people’s lives.

His wild success as a door to door salesman in Charlotte – an endeavor he got into originally to make tuition and board money to supplement his scholarship – led him to change his mind and realize he could accomplish just as much good in a different way that drew on the incredible sales skills he discovered and kept developing. “As I kept working on my presentations, I knew I had the ability to help people grow their businesses,” he says.

Most people don’t realize that Tyler’s home state of Rhode Island was at one time the largest jewelry producing state in the U.S. Growing up, his, grandmother, aunts and other relatives worked in the jewelry business, and at a time when gold prices were soaring, it made sense to sell gold jewelry part time. Covering his college campus, he sold chains, bracelets, gold filled and plated rings to fellow students – and with each sale, enjoyed the feeling of making money, feeling independent and reaching his weekly goals.

Motivated by the vast potential he saw, Tyler expanded his reach in two ways – selling to businesses off-campus in the greater Charlotte area and expanding his product lines beyond jewelry to become a bona fide wholesale rep (working independently with many major companies) whose “book” included everything from backgammon sets, billiard cues and pots and pans to Maxim tools, Anchor Hocking bake ware, cutlery and hunting and fishing knives.

“When I helped someone solve a problem by bringing them an item he or she couldn’t get otherwise and I got paid, bingo, I was happy and so were they,” he says. “I felt instant gratification. My customers started asking me if I could hunt down products and I would negotiate with wholesalers to make a reasonable profit – and eventually began selling items on consignment. I’m this 19 or 20 year old kid dealing with giant manufacturers, meeting nice local business owners. It was an exciting time.”

Other wholesale reps he met heard about Tyler’s stellar reputation as a salesman, and wondered what his secret was. Why were they only making $20 in the same time frame that he was generating $100 to $150? He didn’t know how to explain and quantify the nuts and bolts of his process – his expertise in that would come years later – but he offered to ride along and work with them to see if he could identify any flaws.

He often noted that while he started his day very early, many of his fellow salesmen and saleswomen would wait till late morning and give themselves only a tiny window where a customer might be open to buy anything. Tyler figured out he had to make 45-50 cold calls a day to find 20 who would talk to him and 5 who would buy something and hopefully clear him $100. He discovered that the key to the sale was finding that sweet spot where he had an item someone wanted and they had the money to buy it. Noting flaws, weaknesses, even laziness in the methodology of others proved to open the door to his eventual success as a sales trainer.

“If we look at my evolution, those are some of the essentials that I teach people now in our Sales Immersion Course – reaching an agreement for the big sales, resolving the toughest sales objections, defining and delivering the right message, effectively handling the competition,” Tyler says. “Back then it was less formal, I developed these ideas and techniques by paying close attention to what I told these other salespeople and, upon their urging, jotting it down. After each time in the field, I would recap what I had done and develop more solid answers for the next time.

“As time went by, I began showing more and more people how they could make more money, informally teaching them all of the processes and techniques I had developed,” he adds. “Not surprisingly, I found some who would respond well to my teaching and improve over time by implementing what I told them, and others who preferred to constantly harp on why what they were doing wasn’t working rather than listen to my suggestions.”

Tyler, who later achieved similar wild levels of success selling advertising and other intangible services, naturally realized that he preferred to spend time encouraging people who were dedicated to taking their game to the next level. That’s why Richard Tyler International’s Commitment To Excellence® Sales Immersion™ Sales Training program isn’t a several hour talk but an intense six day seminar for the professional who expects immediate results. Hardcore training designed to transform ordinary salespeople into extraordinary sales performers, it’s real training for those who refused to accept nothing but the best.

“I don’t feel it’s overstating things to say that we’ve developed an unbelievable program here, and that no one else comes close to what we do in this class,” says Tyler. “With leadership and management, you can teach a principle and the student can go out and do it immediately. But sales doesn’t work that way. Sales is an integrated process where everything has to flow just right and where commitment to following through on a process is foundational. In our process, we start at the beginning. We teach our clients how people learn, along with what a customer’s objections are, their wants and needs, how to resolve concerns and how to satisfy them – and multiple ways to reach agreements with them.”

Beyond the Sales Immersion and Leadership Mastery Courses, Tyler says, “we’re always looking to help people grow their business and create a revenue generating culture. We consult on product launches, marketing, designing new products and mergers and acquisitions. A client who is buying a new company and needs a quick turnaround in its business fortunes will contact us and seek our expertise in creating a culture that can achieve that. In another scenario, someone might be buying a company whose numbers look good on paper, but they want us to take a deeper look at its people and processes to make sure the skills are there to turn that money in the bank into long term success.”

Even before he launched Richard Tyler International, Tyler was always challenging himself and his employers to transcend the tried and true. When he sold advertising for a company that created TV listing leaflets that were disseminated at major supermarkets, he asked to be assigned to their worst markets – because he knew he couldn’t prove himself in a market where anyone else could make the same sales. He also freely offered his skills as an advisor for those salespeople who were having trouble “closing their books.” He found that one of the major obstacles was that salespeople got overconfident and went off-script, upending the process and its necessary “flow of ingredients.”

The same type of challenge earned Richard Tyler International its first client, Miller Brewing Distributors. A young lady he had met was eager to help him connect with the renowned beer company, but she told Tyler that they really preferred a consultant who had experience in that industry. He questioned why. It was an era where the prevailing wisdom in the training, consulting and motivational speaking world was that companies preferred to work with experts in their same niches. He was told time and again that he needed to narrow his focus, but he refused.

“I felt if I did this,” he says, “I would be drilling one hole too deep. I didn’t want to my focus as a sales consultant to be only beer, furniture, celluar service or whatever. I was and am proud to be an expert in sales and management, and the principles I teach work across the board for every business and industry.”

Tyler met with reps from the Miller Brewing Company Distributor and told them that he didn’t have to know the nuts and bolts of their industry to help them. “All they needed,” he told them, “was someone who knew how to sell. If you master the principles of selling, that transcends all specific products and services being sold.”

His challenge was to have them allow him to go out into the field with one of their most trusted sales reps. If at the end of the day, Tyler didn’t help him make more sales, he would bow out. But if the salesman felt that he learned something valuable that made a difference, Tyler and the Miller Brewing Company Distributor would move forward with the training agreement. The day he went out, the rep and he made dozens of additional placements and over 100 individual product sales that would never have made without Tyler’s help – a fantastic day that launched the still growing empire of Richard Tyler International.

“Looking back, I feel that I am exactly where I want to be,” he says. “Years ago I said I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives, and I have now helped grow my clients’ businesses from a few million to hundreds of millions, from hundreds of millions to billions. We’ve guided companies that have in turn generated thousands of jobs for people and we’ve change the lives of entrepreneurs and those who come to us seeking to enhance their careers in sales leadership.

“My goal has always been simple: to help people,” Tyler adds. “I believe that every one of us has a seed of greatness in us, and our job at Richard Tyler International is to get that side of a person out in the open. I see it as my personal mission to help people cultivate the greatness of people and their companies. And I always tell people that if they only apply our philosophies to business, they’re missing the real value of them, which is making them the principles of their lives. Nobody should turn off their desire to help people and care when they leave the office.”

Tyler relays a personal anecdote that sums up the reason he loves his work and the opportunities it provides him to make that difference in so many lives: “One of the fellows in my Sales Immersion class told me he had never effectively communicated with his father-in-law, who always seemed negative and finding fault with everything. After our client graduated the class, he used the principles I taught him about being a better communicator to open up the channels of communication. This man learned things about his father-in-law that he had never known and the two have since developed a great relationship. I love touching people’s business and personal lives that way. They’ve got to do the work, but I can guide them down the course.”

Tyler sums up his success philosophy with his trademarked phase that he shares with all his clients. Remember, “Your success tomorrow is in direct proportion to your ‘Commitment to Excellence®’ today.”™